Friday, October 7, 2011

O+ Festival: A Healthy Start, An "Open Source" Future?

I like Dr. Cingel's original concept of "trading art for health care," and the O+ Festival has deservedly received attention outside the bubble that is the Hudson Valley, and our fair city of Kingston. I think the time is ripe to take it to another level, and place it in the public domain as an Open Source that reaches all across the land. The 90 bands that vie for 25 slots should all have a venue, well beyond the creative coolness that is Kingston.

The cause should expand well beyond artists and health care, and quickly become a model for bartering accessible health care for those who may not wear the label or carry the cache of "Artist."

Dr. Cingel and event organizers need only look at the viral, wild expansion of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, going from zero to sixty thousand in a few weeks time, and understand that people are hungry and ready for social movements that are not only designed for small sub-groups of the populace, but open, accessible, and beneficial to all that need real solutions and viable alternatives to business as usual. Otherwise, the Third Annual O+ Festival will be much like the first two, with solutions geared narrowly and a few bands and a few doctors competing for rather than expanding the base and great promise the concept offers.